Assessing School Readiness: Validity and Bias in Preschool and Kindergarten Teachers' Ratings

As a part of efforts to evaluate and monitor the increasing public investment in early childhood education, teachers are being asked to assess children's school readiness. In this study, preschool teachers and kindergarten teachers rated children's skills in three areas (kindergarten readiness, academic skills, and communication skills), and these ratings were compared with direct assessments of the children's skills. Ratings by both groups of teachers tended to be more highly related to basic skills, such as counting and number naming, than to abilities such as solving applied problems and using expressive and receptive vocabulary. Preschool teachers' ratings had a lower association with children's observed skills and abilities than kindergarten teachers' ratings. Ratings of children attending Head Start were systematically inflated, but this relationship was mediated to a significant extent by the teachers' levels of education. More educated teachers rated children in a manner consistent with the children's directly assessed skills. Implications of these findings for informing future efforts to assess school readiness by using teacher ratings are discussed.     

冠军由基因决定吗?

本文要点: ◆遗传型是机体全部遗传基因的总和,代表了个体的遗传潜力.在决定个体的解剖、生化、生理、行为等特性或遗传表型(如褐色的眼睛、75kg的体重、50 ml/kg/min的最大摄氧量等)上起主导作用.     

A study of curriculum development in a new special school

Anne Maddison is deputy headteacher, with responsibility for curriculum, at the Milestone School, a special school created recently after the amalgamation of three smaller schools. In this article, she describes the development of an outcomes-based curriculum for pupils with a range of learning difficulties aged from two to 16 years. Anne Maddison sets out the rationale for her work in the context of a need to promote shared approaches to teaching and learning at this newly formed school.
The curriculum development project described here was evaluated using questionnaires, interviews and the analysis of documents and practice as part of a case study in school-based enquiry. Anne Maddison used the outcomes of these processes as part of her Doctor of Education (EdD): Educational Leadership course at Lincoln University.
Since this article was written, the Milestone School has undergone its first Ofsted inspection. The report noted that teaching at the school is 'of very high quality' and the curriculum 'is very good'. Inspectors noted that 'the planning of schemes of work, which are being developed with different subjects being focused on each year, is exemplary, with clear outcomes for pupils of different abilities'. While Anne Maddison's article details the experience of one school, her analysis may be of interest to other school managers, teachers, governors or advisers who are seeking to promote the development of a more inclusive curriculum.